Viaduct vitriol

Seattle leaders didn’t actually call state officials liars during today’s City Council transportation committee meeting – but it was close.

“It’s disappointing … that there is a gap, I’ll call it that, in the accuracy of information (coming from the state),” said Committee Chairwoman Jan Drago. “… We’re experiencing a great deal of frustration now.”

Councilman Peter Steinbrueck chimed in with his lamentations of “a breakdown in a sense of working relationships” between the state and city on the issue of how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. “Somehow we’ve got to get back to the rational, collaborative effort to finding a cost effective solution. The city, I think, has worked strenuously to find just that.”

Steinbrueck called it “shameful” that city officials had to resort to official public records requests to get documents about the state’s studies of options for replacing the elevated highway. (By the way, both the council and the mayor’s office routinely require the news media make such formal requests before they’ll release basic public documents.)

At issue is whether the state gave short shrift to studying Mayor Greg Nickels’ proposal for a smaller waterfront tunnel before declaring the idea unsafe and unreasonable.

“The integrity of the city of Seattle and the Seattle Department of Transportation has been – what’s the word? – attacked or undermined or compromised – and that’s a problem.”

Grace Crunican, head of the city’s transportation department, responded with a suggestion the city’s rep had been “impugned” by the state.

“There’s is a vote that’s on and we just want it to be up or down on the facts of the various proposals and I don’t want people to think that we put something together on the back of an envelope,” said Grace Crunican, head of the city’s transportation department. “That’s not the case.”

For more information, check out P-I reporter Larry Lange’s story on it in tomorrow’s paper.